Archive for the ‘On gmail’ Category

Just had a spur of inspiration. I was going through one of my gmail accounts (yes, sadly, I have nearly 30 email addresses, of which I only use three actively, still subscribing for more…), and looking through my inbox. Well, call it an inbox if you want. It was trash, trash, trash everywhere. In the one month that I haven’t checked my email, it was overloaded with nearly 300 emails from internet marketers (not one myself, no worries). BAD!!! I then remembered a dear (alas, overseas) friend of mine said he was going to send something to me, and if not for Gmail’s search capabilities (Hurrays for Google!), I would have destroyed my PC.

Well, the obvious solution was to implement filters and labels for cleaner email management. To be honest, I did that a long time ago, but it was a mess. I mean, Gmail’s great and everything, except it DOESN’T ALLOW YOU TO PLACE LABELS IN AN ORDER YOU WANT!!! If you ever had a LOT of labels, that’s troublesome. If you don’t check your email in a while, and someone sends you a whole bunch of stuff, you filter it for later use, but it’s all in disarray!!! Completely disorganized labels, running off everywhere!

Have a look at the screenshot below:

Gmail screenshot

Taken from my Gmail account I wasn’t too proud of. If I wanted to place all emails from a certain source to the folder ‘others’, for example, I’d have to create a filter (troublesome, since I only have a few), or I’d select all emails from that person, then drag down my ridiculously long list of labels before dragging down into my folder.

It worked wonders for me. It’s probably really stupid after you’ve seen it, but here it goes anyways…*drum rolls, please*

Gmail screenshot 2

For a clearer view:

Gmail screenshot 3

Yes! I simply placed labels in categories, using alphabetical code names! For example, IM was for the Internet marketing stuff (*belch*), and A, well, I just thought it’d be nice to put all the social media stuff on top so I can see everything clearly. A for astounding? XD

Well, there you have it. It’s not the most exciting tip you’ve ever encountered, but, it can help improve visibility and colour-coding of your labels.

I mean, while I do realize it is tedious trying to sort out all the emails, but I think it’s well worth the effort in the long term, since labels and filters are permanent. I sat down (sadly) all afternoon filtering and sorting the labels, but, the end result? Satisfaction.